While Barnier was flying back from Washington on Friday 13 July, his team analysed the Chequers’ white paper together with the 27 national Brexit delegates in the Council Working Party. The UK government had published the paper the day before and national authorities immediately fired off extensive sets of questions to their delegates in Brussels, which they consolidated and emailed to Barnier's team. A long meeting went painstakingly through all the items. Many comments focused on the threats to EU interests as well as the integrity and autonomy of EU governance. Others inquired about specific policies. What does it mean that the UK's internal security tools will “closely align” to EU tools, some capitals asked, and how may that affect future cooperation? The UK wanted to stay in the EU data protection board and use the EU's “one-stop-shop”, a system whereby one national agency licenses EU-wide operations. Would the UK data regulator apply EU or UK rules on data protection for that purpose, some capitals asked? And what happens if the regulator does not apply EU rules, or does not apply them correctly: who can sue the UK since there is no EU Court jurisdiction? Some capitals asked why the UK wanted a common rulebook for goods but not for public procurement of goods. On services, a member state wrote, the UK government mentions that the UK's regulatory flexibility means “the UK and the EU will not have current levels of access to each other's markets”. Could the UK government further specify in which specific service sectors it expected access to be more limited compared to the single market? On the novel customs system of a dual tariff, would the UK be able to point to any other country in the world that had already developed such a system? They were all relevant questions that merited detailed replies two years after the referendum.

Barnier's team, however, cautioned national diplomats not to engage too much in a textual analysis of the white paper. “We must see this exercise as creating space for negotiations”, it told the Council Working Party. A few days later, Tony Blair visited Barnier and urged him to push more quickly for clarity on the future relationship.